


hero

by WritingOnTheWalls



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Are they married? I need answers, Canon Compliant (Mostly), Dwayne is The Dark don't @ me, Kirk does not like this, M/M, Poor Kirk, Spoilers for all of KFAM thank you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 21:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20553263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingOnTheWalls/pseuds/WritingOnTheWalls
Summary: kirk just wants to wake up next to his fiance. dwayne has other plans.





	hero

He’s the most beautiful man Kirk’s ever seen. 

All angles and muscles and tanned skin and a big lazy grin on his dopey face. His dark hair is wild and he’s almost as tall as Kirk, but appears to take up twice the room, exuding the kind of energy that he never has, never could, never dared. Even standing in a corridor with a purple backpack slung around his shoulder, bouncing on the balls of his feet and laughing with the kind of ease that doesn’t come with knowing somebody for a handful of days, he seems so sure of himself. So full of life. 

When they all shuffle into the stuffy college classroom, and the only free seat is the one next to the handsome stranger, Kirk almost turns around and leaves because those things never work well for him - he always looks a little too long, hesitates a little too often. But he takes a deep breath, nods to himself, and pulls up the seat anyway. 

It takes a moment for him to be noticed in the hustle and bustle of students and books and chatter, but the excited gasp, and offered hand and the bright, bright eyes that greet him almost make it worth it. 

“Dwayne Libbydale,” the boy says, introducing himself with that same easy smile, and Kirk knows from that moment on, he’s got no chance of surviving this in one piece. 

* * *

Dwayne proposes to him. 

It’s ridiculous, like everything about Dwayne, and Kirk maybe shouldn’t even be surprised, except Dwayne seems to have forgotten several key steps in the process. 

Like, the fact that Kirk hadn’t realised Dwayne was gay. Or into him. They’d certainly never held hands, or gone on a date or kissed or  _ anything.  _

Kirk could count on one hand the number of times they’d even hugged (it’s four times. They’ve hugged four times) so surely this is just some kind of weird joke. A little cruel, perhaps, considering, but a joke either way.

Except Dwayne seems to be waiting for an answer. 

“No?” Kirk supplies eventually, a little exasperated, completely confused. “Wait - is this your way of getting out of paying to see The Avengers, because I told you that -”

He doesn’t finish, because Dwayne is kissing him, and it’s maybe the only thing he’s wanted since meeting him 3 years, 4 months and 18 days ago, but now it feels wrong somehow. Dwayne is shaking, but his lips are desperate, and it takes a moment for Kirk to realise he’s crying. 

Dwayne never cries. 

They pull apart, and Dwayne turns away, because Kirk can’t make his mouth make words anymore, and apparently that’s some kind of condemnation. 

Kirk grabs his arm before he leaves, and tugs him into a second kiss. Slower, softer. He hopes the meaning is clear, because he really can’t find the words. These kinds of feelings are so hard to put into words. 

When they finally pull apart, after what feels like lifetimes, Kirk grins shyly at him, and suggests a date first - and Dwayne pouts a little, before sighing his agreement. 

He proposes a total of four times, before Kirk finally proposes himself. 

It’s been five years, eight months and twelve days since they’ve met, and Kirk’s never been happier then when Dwayne says ‘yes.’ 

* * *

Except months later, they’re in Dwayne’s hometown again. Kirk’s heard of it, of course. For the first dozen weeks of their friendship, it’s all Dwayne would talk about. His friends, his family, his farm, his pet snake. 

All the normal stories that come out of kids from small towns in their first semester of college - but they only get weirder from there. 

They’re telling ghost stories by torch light the night before their first exam. There’s 8 boys stacked on top of each other in Dwayne’s tiny shared dorm room, shovelling popcorn and sodas and gummy snakes into their mouths, as they pretend to not care about the stresses the following day will surely bring. 

Dwayne’s waving around the torch, and yelling for silence, and there’s a strange hush around the room as he begins to speak. 

His voice is low, and even, which is surely a task for the exuberant boy, but this makes the entire thing all the most eerie to Kirk. His hushed whispers tell of all sorts of strange things. A vampire who lives in a giant mansion on a hill. Apparitions who haunt the local library. A lake monster who eats the bones of her owners enemies. 

Kirk is as much as skeptic as any boy his age, but the way that Dwayne speaks about these things with a drab sincerity makes him second guess his own logic. He knows all about Dwayne’s comic obsession, his horror movie fixation - but this seems different. Darker. Real.

Three months later, when Dwayne whispers to him alone about the time he and his childhood best friend Benny snuck into a place called Perdition Woods after dark on a dare, Kirk is utterly convinced it’s real. All of it is real. You can’t fake that kind of unadulterated terror, not when you’re somebody like Dwayne. 

So Kirk is a little unsettled when they decide to go back. 

A little more-so when they see the rainbow lights hovering in the sky for the first time.

He feels safe around Dwayne, but this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing anybody is safe from. So he begins to feel scared instead.

* * *

Dwayne disappears for hours on end, and Kirk’s getting suspicious. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Dwayne - of course he does - but the obvious lies start to stack up all too quickly. They argue all the time, but Dwayne swears he’s not doing anything wrong - anything illegal - anything to hurt Kirk. 

He loves Kirk, he insists, and Kirk believes him. 

That doesn’t stop the abject horror that consumes him when he hears Dwayne on the radio. Doing his cursed_ Batman_ impersonation of all things. 

When Kirk confronts him, Dwayne is sheepish. 

“I would’ve told you,” he insisted, “but you would have stopped me.” 

“Of course I would have stopped you,” Kirk hisses back, “you’re going to get yourself murdered.” 

“Somebody has to.” is all Dwayne says, and Kirk knows there’s no arguing with him. He’s always wanted to be the hero of the story - and now’s his chance. He too has seen what hides beneath the polished exterior of King Falls, and it makes him uneasy. But he’s not about to argue about this, not with Dwayne. 

Even when he ends up getting himself arrested. And bloody. And beaten. 

Even when he doesn’t come home for days on end, and all Kirk can do is listen to Sammy and Ben on the radio, and pray that he doesn’t hear his stupid, ridiculous fiance speaking on the other end. 

His prayers rarely get answered, but it’s not like he was really expecting them to anyway. 

* * *

They’re trying to plan their wedding. 

Well, Kirk’s trying to plan their wedding. 

Dwayne’s constantly making excuses why he can’t make appointments, and why he can’t do the research or visit venues. Kirk wants to point out that Dwayne is fine finding time to hang up red string on the poster boards in their basement, and to spend hours down there pondering over Leland Hill’s and Lily Wright’s, but he doesn’t bother. It’s an argument he isn’t going to win. 

Dwayne believes he’s doing the right thing. Dwayne believes in the cause. If his fiance feels left by the wayside in the meantime? Well. That’s a problem for another day. 

Yet still, Kirk can’t help getting annoyed at his fiance’s self righteousness. They’d come here to help Dwayne’s parents, yet Dwayne is hardly around to help anybody. Well, he supposes that isn’t true. Dwayne is trying to help somebody - just maybe the wrong somebody’s. 

Kirk puts his foot down when Dwayne nearly dies in a library fire. “It’s only a black eye” he insists, waving his hands around dramatically as Kirk moodily tries to cover it up, “I didn’t die.” 

“You could have,” Kirk murmurs, hoping the emphasis he places on each syllable is enough to convince Dwayne of how desperately afraid he is. 

It doesn’t. 

The black eye has hardly begun to fade before Dwayne’s disappearing again.

* * *

“I can’t believe I had to find out on the radio, again!” Kirk is tired of re-hashing this same old argument, but his fiance is really getting on his nerves. 

The fact that Dwayne is still his ‘fiance’ is also bothering him - it’d be husband if this whole superhero nonsense wasn’t taking up every waking moment of Dwayne’s life. Not for the first time, Kirk wishes they’d never come to King Falls, or that he’d had to sense to protest when Dwayne had asked if they could stay. 

“I would have told you,” Dwayne insists, “but you never asked.” 

Kirk stares at him. “I wasn’t aware that I had to ask you if you’re hanging out with Tim Jensen, or if you’re helping him build a super suit.” 

“Was it really that obvious?” Dwayne muses, and Kirk sighs heavily. 

“So i’m not wrong.” 

“Are you ever?” 

“I’m starting to think so,” and there’s a silence for a moment, before Kirk speaks again. “Why are you like this.” 

“He came to me,” Dwayne insists, but Kirk isn’t buying it. 

“Nobody knows you’re Dark.” 

“ _ The Dark,  _ c’mon Kirk, not you too. _ ” _

“Sometimes I think Sammy Stevens is the only sane person in this whole town.” 

“You would,” says Dwayne, and Kirk flushes with something he thinks is maybe anger. Dwayne seems to realise this is slightly out of line, before revising the conversation, “Tim’s a lot smarter than you give him credit for.” 

“He’s a broken man,” Kirk shoots back, because it’s true, “and he’s desperate. Of course he thinks this is the best course of action, and of course it’s not.” 

“How do you know that?” 

“Because this whole thing - it’s dangerous. Really fucking dangerous. And I can’t convince you not to get involved, because you don’t give a fuck about me, or what I think apparently, but Jack in the Box Jesus if I’m going to stand by and let you get Mary and the kids involved in this too. Do you know the scariest thing about King Falls Dwayne? The knowledge that maybe one day I’ll wake up, and you won’t be laying here beside me, and I’ll switch on the radio and have to find out that The Dark’s been captured, and that he’s Dwayne Libbydale, and that it doesn’t matter because now he’s dead. Gone. Forever. Every time you’re not here, every single fucking time, I lay in bed and I can’t sleep from worry because what if I wake up and that’s the reality I’m in. A reality without Dwayne Libbydale because he was too stupid to listen to me. If you die, you don’t care, because you think you’re right. You know who would care? Me. Your choices impact more than just you Dwayne, and I would fucking care, and I would be heartbroken, and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, and I wouldn’t wish that on Mary Jensen. Hasn’t she been through enough? How could you do this to her too.” 

Dwayne listens whilst Kirk yells, his face utterly blank. Finally, he speaks, his voice steady, quiet. Dangerous. “If you think for a second that I don’t give a fuck about you, you don’t know me at all.” 

“I know Dwayne Libbydale,” Kirk spits “but I forgot, you’re only The Dark now.” He doesn’t even flinch as Dwayne slams the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be longer, and I was going to give it a nicer, happy ending, but life happens. Am posting anyway, because I posted an excerpt on discord and somebody asked and I //shrugs//  
My favourite thing is focusing on super minor characters, so there you go.  
I would love more Kirk / Dwayne content (that is a hint friends!!)


End file.
